Former rehab center seeks new user for 10-year-old facility

Brokers at CBRE | Grand Rapids hope to find a buyer yet this year for the Southwest Regional Rehabilitation Center, which closed last year as it faced insolvency. COURTESY PHOTO

BATTLE CREEK — The amenities that make the home of the former Southwest Regional Rehabilitation Center in Battle Creek a unique real estate listing also pose challenges for brokers trying to move the property.

The 43,298-square-foot, two-story facility sits within an 8.54-acre site that features a pond and nearby woods. The rehab center, which closed in December amid financial difficulty, is listed for $7.8 million.

Parties that have shown an interest in the site have primarily focused on medical uses, including a new rehabilitation center, said Blake Rosekrans, an associate with CBRE | Grand Rapids, a commercial real estate brokerage that has listed the property since the end of April.

“The amount of interest that we’ve gotten on the property has been great,” Rosekrans said. “We have interest from a few different angles at this point.”

The former rehab hospital itself, at just 10 years old, is in great shape and the facility’s infrastructure allows a buyer to readily repurpose the property for a medical use, Rosekrans said.

The surrounding acreage provides room for expansion and is one of the biggest selling points, although a retention pond does create some limitations on building out the site, he said.

CBRE | Grand Rapids set a target of brokering a sale of the property within six months, and Rosekrans is optimistic that will happen.

Yet the advantages the property has for a future medical use could limit the pool of potential buyers that may have other ideas in mind. The facility, with 19 private and semi-private patient rooms, was specifically designed and built as a rehab center.

Right now, the property is listed and being sold as a fully operational rehab facility, Rosekrans said.

“The thing is, with a building like that, there’s so much infrastructure in place and it’s so specific to medical that it’s a little tougher to go in another direction,” he said. “The pool of users that can step in and use the building and take advantage of the assets, that’s the challenge.

“It takes a very unique type of user to be able to jump in and maximize some of the investment that’s been put into the building.”

Citing a collection of forces that had the rehabilitation center facing insolvency, trustees at Southwest Regional decided in December to close the facility and list the property for sale.

The Southwest Regional campus sits in a health care cluster on Battle Creek’s north side, just a few blocks from Bronson Battle Creek Hospital and next door to an independent and assisted-living community, North Pointe Wood. It’s also near Kellogg Community College.

Other amenities at the property include a fully-equipped kitchen that can put out hundreds of meals per day and an on-site fitness center.